


Pale Knight

by icarus_chained



Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher, Highlander: The Series
Genre: Bordeaux, Fallen Angels, Gen, Swords & Fencing, The Horsemen - Freeform, The Order of the Blackened Denarius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-12
Updated: 2012-04-12
Packaged: 2017-11-03 13:06:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of the events in Bordeaux, Michael Carpenter finds he is Needed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pale Knight

**Author's Note:**

> Set immediately following CAH/Rev 6:8 for Highlander. Somewhere between _Grave Peril_ and _Small Favour_ for DF (more or less).

Michael didn't know what had brought him to France, half-way around the world. He didn't know what He wanted him to do. But he knew, beyond doubt, that it was urgent. The pressure of Presence at his back, the flavour of something almost like worry ... Michael did not walk the streets of Bordeaux so much as run, and his hand rested on the hilt of his sword more by instinct than thought. Someone needed him. And fast.

There was an alley up ahead, and the dark wash of a demon's presence hit him at almost exactly the same moment as the sounds of swords clashing. _Amoracchius_ was in his hand a heartbeat later, his cloak flying behind him as he spun around the corner, and caught sight of the opponents.

Tarsiel raised his head, snarling as he sensed Michael's presence, using his sword to almost casually club the man he was fighting aside. No. Not man. Or not exactly a man. Michael didn't know what it was he sensed from the battered stranger, nothing he had ever felt before, but it hardly mattered. The man gave a choked gasp of agony as he fell beneath Tarsiel's blade, and Michael could not stand back a second longer. He lunged for the Fallen, _Amoracchius_ all but incandescent with the strength of his faith, and gave everything he had to driving the demon away from his victim.

"Knight!" the thing hissed, black hate twisting the features of the mortal who played his host. "This is no business of yours! Leave, before I kill you. This creature is none of yours."

Michael shook his head, standing firm between the Fallen and his prey. "I do not know who he is, and I do not care. I will let no-one fall to you, Tarsiel Plague-touched!"

There was a gasp, somewhere behind him, and Michael shifted to the side so he could see the stranger as well as the Fallen. The man had pulled himself laboriously to his feet, leaning heavily on his own sword, and his eyes were heavy in his face. There was a look there, one Michael knew so very well, one he had seen in too many places. The look of a man who sees the nature of his enemy for the first time. The look of a man meeting the Fallen. And then, the look faded, and what replaced it looked for all the world like exasperation. Michael stared.

"Tarsiel," the man rasped, shaking his head. "Plague. Pestilence. Oh for ... Kronos is gone, you bloody antique menace! He's gone, he's dead, you will never get him back. Now go away!" He staggered forward, sword raised half in warning, half in plea, and his face was twisted between anger and a deep, exhausted sorrow. The Presence that was ever at Michael's side sang in sorrow for that expression.

Tarsiel, on the other hand, seemed to find it amusing. The Fallen laughed harshly, a wheezing sound like the death-rattle of a diseased man. The very air around him seemed to reek of sickness. "Oh no. Not so easy, Horseman. Not so easy as that. If we cannot have one of you ... And you are all that is left, Death-on-a-Horse. You are all that is left." He sighed softly, a hissing, sibilant sound, and crept closer to the horrified man. "You are all there is, and we will have you, Ancient One. You cannot escape us."

The man stared at him, breathing heavily, his eyes furious and despairing in a fine-boned, bloodied face. For a second, he seemed to fall to the inevitable, his shoulders slumping in eloquent despair, and Michael opened his mouth to call him back, to tell him it wasn't so, to beg him to ignore the sick triumph in Tarsiel's face as the Fallen prowled closer, but he never got more than a gasped 'No!' past his lips before the man seemed to explode into furious action.

Tarsiel fell back with a shocked cry, blood seeming to sprout almost by magic from his sword arm, the blade nearly falling from numb fingers before he managed to fall back from the lightning assault and reaffirm his grip. Face suddenly hard and blank, his supposed prey gave him no chance to recover further, steel ringing as he struck repeatedly at the Fallen's defenses, driving the demon back to the end of the alley. Michael stared in something like awe. It had been a long, long time since he had seen swordsmanship like that. For all the desperation and brutality of his assault, there was skill in the stranger's movements, almost beauty in the form. It touched something in Michael, a reminder once more to him that in all God's creation, no matter how brutal or terrible, there was always some glimmer of beauty.

A short scream cut off his musings, and he stared in horror as Tarsiel struck out through the circle of steel, demonic endurance so much more than a match for human, and Michael realised the Fallen had only been waiting for the desperate man to tire in his assault. A realisation that came too late. The Fallen's blade sprouted like some evil sapling from the man's back, and the stranger sagged to his knees, the air screaming from his lungs as the blade pulled back and blood replaced it. In his eyes, there was only tiredness, a serene, pained exhaustion that struck more deeply at Michael's heart than any mark of horror. With a cry of fury and grief, he lunged at the man's attacker.

Tarsiel roared in fury as _Amoracchius_ knocked his bloodied blade aside, dancing back from the hum of the holy sword, spitting in Michael's face. Michael ignored him, driven past pity by the fate of the man behind him, and his strength was truly as the strength of ten as he called out to the Lord. "Lava Quod Est Sordium!"

_Amoracchius_ burst into brilliance, the force of the light driving the demon back, and with a scream of frustration Tarsiel broke away and ran, dodging around Michael with the speed that had let him strike down the strange swordsman. Michael spun after him, moving to stand over the body in two steps, determined that the Fallen should harm the man no more, but Tarsiel was bent on survival alone, and within moments the only living things in the alley were Michael, and the man dying at his feet.

Or rather, the man dead at his feet, Michael saw with sorrow as he looked down. Head tilted back, wound dark and grisly in _Amoracchius'_ light, the stranger looked small, fragile. Tired. So very tired. Michael had seen many men die, more than he ever wanted to, and in worse circumstances, but he didn't think he had ever seen one look so exhausted, as if death itself could not ease the burdens he carried.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, kneeling at the dead man's side, reaching out to clean the blood gently from his features as he whispered the Lord's prayer, his heart heavy with grief for a man he did not know. At his side, _Amoracchius_ glowed softly, as if in sympathy, and the Presence inside him wrapped him in warmth against the pain. Michael hated seeing people die, hated seeing them fall before a demon. No-one deserved that fate. He bowed his head, and prayed for the man's deliverance.

"It's probably too late for that, you know."

Michael gasped, falling back onto his arse as the dead man took another shuddering breath in front of him, lightnings flashing as the wound closed. Stunned, Michael looked up to see tired eyes gleaming with something very close to amusement, matching the tone of the rasping voice. He stared. He couldn't help it. He had a sudden understanding for those who had watched Lazarus come back to life.

"What ...?" he managed, stunned past words. The Presence inside him warmed in sudden humour, echoed by the man in front of him.

"I said, it's probably too late for that," he commented lightly, struggling up onto his elbows. Michael reached instinctively to help him, stopping when the man flinched violently away and toppled back onto his side. Michael froze, holding his hands out to his sides carefully.

"I mean you no harm," he said, gently, silently berating himself. The man had just done battle with a Fallen and come back from the dead. He probably wasn't going to be in the most trusting of moods.

The stranger snorted, pulling himself back up with an air of weary practise. "Not yet," he muttered, and looked up to meet Michael's eyes with rueful expectancy. "But you will, Knight of the Cross. You will. And speaking as a man who has already been burned to death for his crimes ... I would really rather not have to repeat the experience."

Michael stared, confusion, pity and horror roiling inside him. The words had an air of truth, though Michael could not say how they could be possible. But they were true, as far as the man himself knew. He knew that beyond doubt, and it set an ache deep within him. "Who are you?" he whispered, softly, and the man laughed darkly.

"Oh, that's an easy one. Weren't you listening earlier?" He spat, pulling himself up onto his knees, swaying weakly as he faced Michael, smiling grimly in the light from the holy blade. A blade that had not ceased it's glow, and Michael frowned as he realised that. But there was no martial edge to the soft light, no glare against a demonic presence. Only light, soft and gentle, like a hand held out in the shadows. "I am Death," the man went on, soft and bitter. "The Fourth Horseman. The only remaining Horseman, as it happens. Pity. Kronos would have liked Tarsiel as much as Tarsiel liked him, I think. Instead, the bastard gets stuck with me." He laughed, as if it were a brilliant joke, and Michael ached for the pain in the sound.

"I don't understand," he said quietly, meeting the man's pained gaze. "You seem human to me. I sense no demonic presence in you."

'Death' laughed, throwing back his head and convulsing with harsh guffaws. "Oh, no," he breathed. "Not a demon. Just a man. Just a guy." He keened, a hollow sound of old grief, and fell forward onto his hands and knees. Michael grabbed him, reaching out without thought to hold the shaking form, and the man gasped in his arms, pulling back in desperate panic, face white and drawn with terror. Michael almost let go, almost released him, but the instinct that had driven him here, the hum of Presence, whispered for him to hold on, to hold close and soothe as best he could.

So he tried. He tried. Pulling the skinny, battered form close, he held on as the man keened and whimpered, ignoring the weak blows of desperate hands, rocking the stranger as he would one of his children, whispering nonsense words as he stroked dirty hair and held tight against the pain that convulsed the thin body.

"It's alright," he whispered. "It's alright. Shhh. Let it go. Let it go. You're alright." Just nonsense, words of comfort with no knowledge behind them, and maybe they were the biggest lies he'd ever told anyone. For the pain this man seemed to hold, maybe he could never be 'alright'. But Michael said them anyway, in the hope that he would get at least some comfort from the fact that someone was willing to say them to him, willing to hope for it despite it all. And, gradually, the man grew still, the whimpers dying into exhausted silence, and _Amoracchius_ dimmed beside him.

"I hate your God," the man whispered suddenly, and Michael pulled back in shock to see eyes glimmering with faint amusement. He frowned.

"Why?"

"Because He keeps offering things I can't accept, and don't deserve," the stranger answered softly, turning his face away, expression tired. "And because He knows more about temptation than any demon ever born."

Michael frowned. "What temptation? All He's offered is a little comfort ..." He stopped, as the man turned back to meet his eyes, and the depth of pain that gaze took him like a blow to the heart.

"Exactly," the pale man whispered. "Exactly." And with a sigh of exhaustion so deep it shook the heart, he let his head fall, and slipped into unconsciousness in Michael's arms.


End file.
